Logic+Emotion explores the thinking and practice of building responsive & resilient brands in a connected world

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

MVB + MSM

So I'm kind of liking this "blog tournament" idea Joseph Jaffe started recently. I think what I like about it is that it's kind of random. Basically Jaffe posed the question "what are some of the most valuable blogs in your opinion?" and used the comments on his blog to cultivate some of the entries. He then took these and placed them into a list which can be voted upon.

So why do I think this is interesting?

Couple of reasons. First off, like I said it's kind of random and by soliciting from his readers—Jaffe bypasses the "conventional" blog success indicators such as Technorati, RSS subscriptions, Alexa rankings etc. If you threw up a link that you found "valuable"—it was thrown into the ring. Of course we need to realize that the blogs are mostly skewed to the marketing-related space due to Jaffe's audience, but that's kind of a given.

But something else caught my attention. BusinessWeek's Nussbaum On Design made the list and Bruce writes about being honored by being featured alongside some of his favorite bloggers. Let's take a moment to digest this nuance. A member of the mainstream media takes pride in being included in a list created and composed of "bloggers". Has it not traditionally not been the other way around? As I've stated in many ways before—the relationship between the MSM and content creating citizens is becoming more open—more like a dialogue. It's still slow going but it does appear to be happening. This doesn't mean that lines are blurred in my opinion—but it does show subtle signs of mutual respect and credibility. And maybe a new kind of "media collaboration". See visuals below:

Anyway, it's more of an observation than anything else. I just wonder if it's something we'll see more of. What do you think? PS, there are some really good blogs on the list. If you see one you haven't checked out before—take a moment to do so: